


By Force of Friendship

by KChan88



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Canon Era, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-07
Updated: 2017-06-07
Packaged: 2018-11-10 01:59:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11117514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KChan88/pseuds/KChan88
Summary: Written for Barricade Day 2017. As the barricade falls, Enjolras says goodbye to his friends.





	By Force of Friendship

The acrid, smoke drenched air reeks of death.

Yet as Enjolras knocks down a National Guard officer with the butt of his gun, life rushes through him. His heart smacks against his chest, his breaths rapid and ragged in his ears. Dawn breaks over the horizon, bathing the barricade in gold and red light, casting shadows in slices on the ground. His blood feels hot in his veins, every inch of him pulsing with feeling.

They were going to die.

His own words resound in his head.

_Brothers, he who dies here dies in the radiance of the future, and we are entering a tomb all flooded with the dawn._

He was going to die here. His friends, his _family_ , were going to die here, too, unless a miracle occurred, unless the people of Paris suddenly came rampaging through the streets, rebellion in the swift approach of their footsteps.

But he doesn’t hear them.

But he thinks in the likely event he doesn’t survive the day, he’ll hear them from whatever lies beyond.

He believes that.

Pools of sunlight cut through the shadows at his feet, a reminder, a reinforcement of his belief.

The Corinthe stands ruined above him, the window shot through, glass fallen shattered to the paving stones below. Someone he can’t see presses another weapon into his hand. A broken sword, the blade cut off at the center, the hilt still fully attached. He keeps fighting, sweat dripping down his face and from the ends of his too-long blond hair, blood streaked across his knuckles, gunpowder blackening his palms. He fights and fights and fights, sometimes with the elegance of his _canne de combat_ , and sometimes with the spirit of Bahorel behind the force of his swing, less refined, but no less effective. Thinking of Bahorel only makes him think of Prouvaire, and he slams the hilt of the sword into the nose of a national guardsman who approaches, knocking him to the ground.

The sword breaks, and someone hands him another weapon.

Things happen quickly.

He doesn’t even see Bossuet or Joly fall, only sees them through a break in the smoke laying side by side, their hands outstretched toward one another. The sight kicks him in the stomach, sucking the air out of him, but there’s no time to think, no time to grieve, no time no time no _time_ because there’s another gunshot close by, whizzing past his ear, and then another, a familiar, subdued cry piercing the air, as if the person bites their lip against the sound.

Feuilly.

He flings himself low to the ground next to Feuilly, picking up his friend’s pistol from the ground and firing at the national guardsman who would prevent him, striking him in the stomach. He shuts his eyes against the memory of the artillery sergeant, turning toward Feuilly. Feuilly looks back, the life already half-gone from his eyes. Enjolras grasps his hand and Feuilly holds tight, voice hoarse as it emerges.

“I believe what you said,” Feuilly says, coughing, blood gathering in the corners of his lips, mere minutes left of life, death tugging him away already. “I believe it. That dawn. I was…I was angry at the people who said they’d come but didn’t. But they will. I know they will, one day.”

“Yes,” Enjolras says, tears stinging his eyes, gunshots and screams echoing in his ears. “Yes they will. You are a brave man, my friend. So brave.”

Feuilly smiles, lifting one hand up toward Enjolras’ face. Enjolras sees the faded paint stains lingering on his skin, focusing on those instead of the blood. He removes Feuilly’s hat, brushing the sweaty auburn hair from his face. Something explodes, shards of wood flying into the air in a cloud of smoke, and Feuilly’s eyes fall closed, his grip going limp. Enjolras barely registers the loss before another guard comes at him. He picks up the gun again, hitting the guardsman in the stomach without mercy.

He wishes there was time for mercy.

He thinks of the man who shot the shop keeper, hears the winter in his own voice.

_You have one minute. Think or pray._

He hears his pistol shot go off, sees the man slump to the ground, dead.

Boiling rage courses through him. He never spends much time blaming: only looking forward, working, solving problems and inventing strategies. Building coalitions. The anger simmers beneath, but not this hot, not this overpowering. Now it explodes in his chest, amplified by the ghosts of those who came before him, fighting this fight, sacrificing everything for it, loving the future of their country and its people-he looks back over at Feuilly-loving the _world_ enough to risk whatever came for progress. Yet there were people who would stop them. People who sat comfortably in their towers, looking down at this destruction below.

But through this destruction, came hope. Through this destruction came momentum, even in loss. Their names might be history’s dust and ashes, but their cause lived on. _Someone_ would remember them.

He fights and fights and fights. Seconds or minutes or hours pass, he cannot tell which. He cannot even feel his body screaming at him, cannot feel the ache pulsing through his bones.

Another shout nearby, and a flash of curly brown hair near the area where they keep the wounded.

A soft voice, usually merry.

“Enjolras…”

Enjolras knew that voice anywhere, he knew it like he knew his own.

Courfeyrac.

A bullet to his chest, Enjolras realizes. He has minutes, at best.

Enjolras pulls him closer toward the door, shielding them momentarily from the hail of gunfire. He places both hands against Courfeyrac’s own, palm to palm, their fingers intertwining.

“I knew you’d find me,” Courfeyrac says, a hint of his usual smile on his face, his dark green eyes rife with pain. “When I saw the bullets coming, I knew you would come, too.”

“I wouldn’t let you be alone,” Enjolras says, mastering himself. “Not if I could help it.”

“I kept hold of my sword cane, can you believe it?” Courfeyrac asks, a laugh on his breath. “You take it. Knock one of those bastards down with it for me. Goodness I sound a bit like Bahorel, don’t I?”

“A tad,” Enjolras says, leaning closer, his face warm with emotion. “He’d like it.”

Courfeyrac searches his dirty face, letting go of one of Enjolras’ hands and sliding it against his face, the edges of his fingers entwining with the sweaty blond hair.

“You emanate that light I’ve always loved you for, even now,” Courfeyrac says, voice going low, pain making him twitch. “You match the dawn, don’t you? That dawn can’t die, even if we can. Isn’t that right?”

“Yes,” Enjolras says, voice shaking. “Yes that’s right.”

Courfeyrac shuts his eyes, and Enjolras wants to beg him not to go, wants to beg him to stay for just another minute.

“I love you my friend,” Courfeyrac says. “You know that don’t you? I know I tease you.”

“I know,” Enjolras says, resting his free hand on Courfeyrac’s cheek. “I love you. I love you.”

Courfeyrac’s hand slides from Enjolras’ hair, hitting the paving stones. Enjolras takes the hand he still holds, pressing a kiss upon the knuckles.

Then, he has to go.

He pulls Courfeyrac’s still intact sword cane out, fighting and fighting and fighting some more. There’s barely any of them left, and soon, the barricade will fall. Just as the sun settles fully in the sky above, he sees it, his heart screeching to a halt in his chest.

Combeferre, helping a wounded soldier, three bayonets running him through from behind.

A shout emerges from Enjolras, something visceral and agonizing. It rips up his throat, and the guardsmen turn, wide-eyed, dashing off in the other direction, away from the lightning in his glare. He catches Combeferre as he falls, but he’s already dying, already almost gone. Enjolras lowers him to the ground, pressing their foreheads together.

 “It was worth it,” Combeferre rasps, barely audible, fingers grasping Enjolras’ sleeve. Enjolras feels as if someone has ripped his soul in half. _Don’t go_ he wants to say. _Please don’t go_. “I will see you, my dearest friend. Shine bright until they find you.”

“I love you,” Enjolras says again, thinking he hasn’t spoken the words so often in one day since he was a child, even if he carries the sentiment with him always. “And I will. I promise you. Quiet now, it’s all right. I’m here with you.”

“And I…you,” Combeferre says, pulling Enjolras’ hand toward him, pressing a ghost of a kiss to his palm. Enjolras sees that intelligent twinkle in his friend’s eyes one last time before he’s gone.

“Combeferre…” Enjolras mutters. “Combeferre. Combeferre.”

Something in him snaps. For reasons he doesn’t understand, he takes Combeferre’s spectacles off his face, sliding them in his own pocket, pressing a kiss to Combeferre’s forehead before engaging in the last dregs of the fight, dedicating himself to it until his last breath, more of his own words resounding in his ears.

_Oh! The human race shall be delivered, uplifted and consoled! We affirm it on this barricade. Whence shall arise the shout of love, if it be not from the summit of sacrifice?_

He uses Courfeyrac’s sword cane until it breaks, filled with the power of one who doesn’t fear death, because now it stands inevitable.

_O my brothers, here is the place of junction between those who think and those who suffer; this barricade is made neither of paving-stones, nor of timbers, nor of iron; it is made of two mounds, a mound of ideas and a mound of sorrows. Misery here encounters the ideal._

He bursts into the remnants of the Corinthe, rushing up the skeleton of the staircase, seeing the remaining men using the bottles of acid they’d prepared like clubs, the pained shouts ringing in his ears.

_Here day embraces night, and says: I will die with thee and thou shalt be born again with me. From the pressure of all desolations faith gushes forth._

He reaches the upstairs, hitting guardsmen in the head with the only thing he has left; the barrel of a single gun.

_Sufferings bring their agony here, and ideas their immortality._

But they keep coming.

_This agony and this immortality are to mingle and compose our death._

An odd, eerie silence falls. The gunfire dies. The cannons go quiet. Even the moans of the dying cease. He places the billiards table between himself and the approaching footsteps.

The last man standing.

Men rush up the stairs and into the room, but they don’t step near him, afraid.

“He is the leader! It was he who slew the artilleryman. It is well that he has placed himself there. Let him remain there. Let us shoot him on the spot,” one says, followed by others.

He’d wondered if they’d arrest him and put on a show of his trial only to kill him later. But if they were going to kill him, he’d rather die here among the physical memories of his friends. Alone, but not really. He’d seen Marius outside, but he knows not what became of him.

“Shoot me,” Enjolras says, staring them down, flinging away the remaining piece of his gun, challenging them to kill him respectfully.

They stare back at him, searching his bloodied face.

“Take aim!” one shouts.

Another offers him a blindfold, which he declines. They question him and he answers automatically.

And then, a voice.

“Long live the republic! I am one of them.”

Grantaire.

Grantaire was risen from slumber. Grantaire was alive.

“Long live the republic!” Grantaire shouts again. “Finish us both at one blow.”

Enjolras meets Grantaire’s eyes, seeing the belief within them, the belief he always knew could arise. The belief that arises like Paris will, one day. Emotion strikes him again, overflowing. He touches his pocket, where Combeferre’s spectacles rest.

“Do you permit it?” Grantaire asks, more sincere here in this moment of death than ever before.

Enjolras reaches out, clasping Grantaire’s hand. Even now with death barreling toward him, he is not alone.

The last thing he knows before the bullets strike him is his own smile sliding across his face, unfinished.

 


End file.
